YouTube Extends Tentacles to Nine More Nations

Google’s proudly acquired prize YouTube launched nine different versions of its site today to expand its operations. Countries including Brazil, Japan, Italy, Britain, France, and Ireland are some of the nine local-language versions launched today. The local sites feature content that each region can relate to. Moreover, the sites are already translated into the local language, which offers greater accessibility and comfort to local users. YouTube intends to open more local sites in the future.

Interestingly, Germany is excluded from YouTube’s business:

“YouTube's announcement comes at an interesting time for the international community, as Yahoo's Flickr still seems to be hashing out a solution for its user revolts in Germany, Hong Kong, and Singapore due to allegations of censorship. If there is legal precedent in the case of Germany (as Flickr's staff has implied) then perhaps YouTube has managed to dodge a bullet on this one.”

YouTube’s International Manager, Sakina
Arsiwala, reassures us that international users will still be able to access the
original site. The opening of the new sites come not as an intent to limit
content, said Arsiwala. Instead, YouTube probably opened the sites to cater to
local cultures and their best interests, probably a very smart move on
Google/YouTube’s part.